Thriving During Challenging Times

 Introduction

“Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”
Dorothy, from The Wizard of Oz


The world just changed.

Well of course it changed. It’s constantly changing. It’s complex. Six and half billion people live here. Of course it’s changing.

No, I don’t mean in the usual ways.
I mean the reality that most North Americans face.

I mean the world in which we find ourselves today is not one most of us have ever experienced. Many of us won’t like this new world. We’ll long for it to return to the way it was. The cheap energy. The abundant products to buy. The infinite food choices. The luxury of cheap gas and independent personal transportation that allowed us to go anywhere we wanted, whenever we wanted. And the stable economy and jobs that went with it, that gave most of us a high enough income that we could enjoy all these luxuries.

“It’ll go back to being the way it was before, right?” It would be nice. We all wish it would, but this time is different. This time our version of reality has been altered, and this time it’s likely to be permanent. We may go through some good times, or better times, where things seem like they are getting back on track, but there’s a good chance these will be short-lived.

I wish things would go back to the way they were, but I don’t think they are going to. I think this time, it’s different.

For a decade I have been giving workshops on living with renewable energy and over the last three or four years I have broadened them to deal with the many challenges we’re facing. People are often shell-shocked because it is a lot to absorb in an afternoon. This is where this book came from. It will help me provide more detail to a larger audience.  At the end of the book I provide a bibliography of books I’ve read over the last five years that has shaped my world view. I would strongly recommend you use this book as a starting point for further reading on the many challenges the world faces.

As I’ve become more aware of these multiple challenges I’ve also been inspired to make myself more independent and I’ve found a huge benefit: it makes you feel really good. It gets priorities back in balance and lets you focus on what’s important. For some reason I was inspired to plant a vegetable garden in my parents’ suburban home when I was 16, and I see now 34 years later that it was the start of a journey to find meaning that you simply can’t find watching television or surfing the net. I have never earned less money in my adult years than I do right now, and I’ve never been happier and more at peace. I hope to be able to provide you with the tools to attain that same feeling of contentment.

So first I’m going to explain what happened. How did it happen that things went from being so good to being, well, not-so-good today. Once you understand how it happened, hopefully it will be a little easier to deal with the new reality. To many people, this is not a surprise. Many people were saying for many years that things weren’t right and that the problems we are experiencing right now were going to be the result of not altering our behavior.

Most of us know this from our weather payback theory. “It’s been a great fall. Oh, we’re going to pay for it this winter.”

Then once we’ve examined how this happened, I’ll try and convince you why it’s unlikely things will go back to the way they were before. With 6 1/2 billion people on the planet, we have hit overshoot, where we’ve gone past the ability of the world to support so many people. The days of cheap food and cheap energy are behind us. The days of abundance are gone. We’ve now entered the time of scarcity.

This does not have to be a bad thing though. I hope to show you how to deal with the new economic reality in ways that can actually make you feel better. I’ll show you how, by developing a strategy to deal with the new world, many of the new things you’ll be doing will help you not only live in this new world of scarcity but also reduce your footprint on the planet and make you feel better. It will be better for your soul.

At the heart of this book therefore is a message of hope. Things are different than they were, but they’re not necessarily worse. It’s how you look at them that matters. It’s how you deal with the new world. You need to rethink everything you do in terms of economic gain and start thinking in terms of how it will help you live today.

We were conditioned for many decades to be obsessed with saving for tomorrow, putting large sums of money aside for our retirement. Many people who did retire were miserable. They have lots of money but not enough to do and not enough to give their life purpose. The modern economy and democratic society have basically removed any of the need for humans to have to worry about the most basic of human needs, like eating, or staying warm, or surviving for one more day. On one level this was a very good thing. It was a huge accomplishment in terms of human evolution, but the systems we created allowed the species to get lazy and many of us ended up miserable. It took away many of the experiences that have given human lives meaning and joy.

So now it’s time to deal with the new reality. For many it won’t be easy. Many of us feel overwhelmed. We feel dazed and confused, as if someone has just punched us in the face. The sort of economic dislocation that is going on right now is nothing short of a full knock-down, drag-out body blow. Feeling disillusioned is normal. Feeling sad is normal. Feeling discouraged is natural. But at a certain point, it’s not healthy. Eventually you’ve got to come to grips with the task at hand and get moving.

The movie The Shawshank Redemption, which was adapted from a Stephen King short story, takes place in a prison in an environment of terrible oppression. At a critical point the lead character played by Tim Robbins is at his wit’s end, having lost hope. The character played by Morgan Freeman tells him he has a choice to either  “Get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’.” It’s a choice. It’s basically a choice you’ve got to make now. “Do I let this big change take me down with it, or do I rise to the challenge and start dealing with it?”  Do I give in to the laziness of despair, or do I use this as a challenge and rise to the occasion and see it as a huge opportunity for new meaning in my life?

Living in the new world is not going to be worse than it was, it’s just going to be different. Humans are adaptable creatures, so now it’s time for you to adapt.

I think the new time will be a time of great potential, where humans learn different ways of dealing with challenges. You have within you the potential to rise to this challenge and thrive. You can create a new reality for yourself, one where you’ll be able to take more joy in the simple things. The simple act of growing your own food and preparing it. The simple act of harvesting your rainwater to use in your home. These are good things. These can bring great satisfaction and can fill your soul with joy.

There are many books on the various challenges we face. They are often big picture views of the problem and do not offer a practical strategy for an individual to use. They end up being kind of discouraging because they love to point out the problems, but one is not always left with a feeling of empowerment as to how to deal with them. One line of reasoning with many of these books is that there will be such a complete collapse that you’ll have to live in the woods and scavenge as humans did in the early stages of our evolution. The other suggests loading up on canned goods and guns and having the SUV fully gassed up so you can bug out when things get bad. Bug out to where? If things are that bad there’s not going to be gas to fill that gas tank up with. I don’t believe things will get that bad, and I don’t agree with either of these lines of thinking. 

This is not a big picture book. It’s a little picture book. It’s a “you” book, showing “you” how to deal with the problems. The problems are big and sometimes seem insurmountable, but I believe if we all make the move to independence—in our food production, in our energy use, and in living within our means financially—many of the larger environmental and economic problems will look after themselves. It’s this personal self-determination that offers the solution.

This is the reason I’ve structured the book by outlining the challenges in the first part of the book and offering solutions later. There are lots of challenges, and if I had put the challenge in each chapter I think it might have been a bit discouraging. I think it’s a better approach to just lay out what’s happening and then give you lots of solutions so you can get on with dealing with them. It’s like taking a bandage off quickly rather than prolonging the discomfort. This book is based on workshops I’ve been giving for years and I’ve found it’s best to follow this approach. By the end of the day people are motivated, have the tools, and are ready to get on with implementing their strategy to deal with the challenges.

So let’s get on with it. First we’ll find out how we got into this mess; then I’ll give you the tools you need to come up with a strategy that is going to help you deal with it, rise above it, and be happy—really happy while you’re at it!